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Nov 1 Ars Electronica 2016

Ars Electronica - the Festival for Art, Technology and Society- takes place every year in Linz, Austria, during the first week of September. The 2016 topic: RADICAL ATOMS and the Alchemists of our Time, questioned what comes after self-driving cars and the internet of things? The main festival location is at the Postcity, a huge 80,000-m2 facility that used to be the postal service’s letter & parcel distribution center in Linz.

The festival’s program was as usual packed with exhibitions, conferences, concerts and other forms of venues, attracting a huge amount of visitors. This years highlight that everyone was waiting for was the “Drone 100” project. Ars Electronica Futurelab in collaboration with Intel holds the world record in the category Most Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) Airborne Simultaneously: 100 pieces.

Highligths from the festival

'Inferno' by Louis-Philippe Demers (CA/SG), Bill Vorn (CA)

‘Inferno’ is a participative robotic performance project inspired by the concept of control and the representation of hell. From Dante’s Circles of Hell to theme parks such as Haw Par Villa’s Ten Courts of Hell, passing by Joe “the Mechanical Boy”, bodies are handed to eternal and external forces controlling and afflicting them. Those punishments and external powers, found in the depiction of numerous flavours of hell, suggests an infinite and mundane control loop under which the body will be forced to move endlessly.

During the Ars Electronica, the audience could experience the performance live. Group of the public was given an active part in the performance, creating a radical instance of immersive and participative experiences.

‘Inferno’ won a Honorary Mention in this year’s PRIX ARS under the category Interactive Art+.

Photo: Zane Cerpina

Black Hole Horizon by Thom Kubli (DE)

The project questions: 'What is the relationship between oscillating air, black holes and soap bubbles? What effect does the sound of horns have on the human psyche and why is it present in various creation myths? The complete installation comprises three horns varying in size and shape according to their individual pitch and timbre.'

‘Aurelia 1 + Hz/proto viva sonification’ is an interactive performance that explores the phenomena of interspecies communication, sonification of the environment, and underwater acoustic/bioacoustics, using jellyfish. The current 6th Mass Extinction may not apply to them, in fact, their numbers are growing. It is not established (yet) how they communicate.

The project won a Honorary Mention in this year’s PRIX ARS under the category Interactive Art+.